They’ve been howling against the practice for years, and even made a movie claiming that Democrats used it to “steal the election.” But it worked, so now they’re gonna use it too. Do we think it will be successful, or will their own preaching make it an uphill climb to convince their base?
My question is, are they doing it because they realized it worked for the dems and it could work for them as well, in which case, go for it. If they think it’ll get more of their own base to vote, it will (should) inherently make it easier for everyone to vote. That is unless they add some restrictions like only people over 65 years old or only make it available to people that live in the ‘good’ part of town (remember, when they reduce the amount of polling places, they get rid of the ones in the ‘bad’ parts of town first).
However, my guess is they’ll push for absentee/mail in votes and ballot harvesting, flood it with fraudulent ballots, then say ‘oh well, we tried, no more of that’, and continue to claim that they have to get rid of everything but in-person voting because of all the fraud, even as they’re presented with proof that the only fraud came from their own side.
In any of the states where the GOP is pushing for this change, people should be paying close attention to accusations of fraud in the weeks/months leading up to the election. Accusing the other side of cheating, before the game even starts, is right out of Trump’s playbook.
I was going to ask if any of the GOP members pushing for this change are MAGA/MAGA adjacent or if they’re more level headed republicans, as it seems there’s been a very slow increase in the number of ‘normal’ republicans that are willing to push back against the MAGA crowd in an attempt to bring things back to normal. But it looks like this is being pushed by Lara Trump, so, nevermind.
My guess: If they win, they’ll take the W, but still complain about the ‘fraud’ (just like Trump did in 2016), if they lose, they’ll use all the ‘fraud’ as a way to try and get the election overturned.
Truthfully, I’m not sure how to react to them saying (literally) “they’re cheating, so we’re going to cheat too”, except that it’s not cheating. It’s like a football coach saying “well, as long as the other team keeps knocking you guys over and the ref isn’t saying anything, you should do it to them too” .
Also, from the “bank your vote” website, this seems like a crock of shit from beginning to end:
President Trump said it himself – making a plan to vote early is critical.
Did he? (Actually, I see now that he did, they linked to him saying that on Truth Social, less than a month ago)
So many Americans who haven’t traditionally voted with Republicans have realized that Democrats are not truly interested in their prosperity and success – just their votes.
Have they?
Republicans across the country have been fighting to make sure your vote is safe and secure – even bringing important lawsuits to key states to ensure your vote is safe and secure.
Taken at face value, sure, but they left out that these lawsuits weren’t filed in support of mail in voting and ballot harvesting.
It does seem like they’ll have to get their messaging coordinated a bit better. The bank your vote site (paid for by the RNC) reads like this is a great way to make sure you can successfully and safely cast your vote and be sure that it’ll be counted. The news articles are saying ‘they’re cheating, so we’re going to cheat too’.
“If you’re not going to adapt, you’re going to die. We have to adapt. Is it distasteful? Do we consider it cheating? Absolutely,” Parks said. “But if you don’t do it, and you know for sure that the opposition is heavily involved in doing it, then you’re setting yourself up for failure.”
But the right seems to do just fine with these type of contradictory/mixed messages. Their base seems to thrive on a diet of anchoring and confirmation bias along with a (un)healthy amount of Appeal To Authority, where said authority is RW media outlets that have been proven over and over and over to lie about damn near anything.
They’ll certainly have no problems doing it, but it won’t be successful/move the needle. Expect them to defend their actions with “you should see what those Chicago Democrats have been doing since the 60s!” while offering zero evidence whatsoever.
I’m sure this is a last ditch effort on the GOP’s part as they realize this entire election is going to be an uphill battle. But even if this doesn’t move the needle on the presidential side, it might make a big difference in local elections. Getting an extra few thousand votes from people in nursing homes that otherwise wouldn’t vote could mean a republican Mayor or Governor or school board member.
That has been this crew’s mentality all along. They come at it from a POV that everybody will cheat if given the chance and that success is all about whatever you can get away with so if someone else gets ahead who “does not deserve to” then it must mean they gamed the system better than you. You don’t need evidence, you just “know for sure” because how else would they win?
Even if they’re posing this as a whiny “they’re doing it so we will too” situation, normalizing increased voter accessibility is a good thing that will benefit Democrats more than Republicans in the long run. The whole point of fighting tooth and nail against this stuff is because the GOP knows that demographics are turning against them in many areas.
Blithely accepting an insane level of cognitive dissonance is the conservative right’s bread and butter.
This is the first I’ve heard of it, but my initial thoughts having read the Wiki are with the Republicans. Ballot harvesting looks like very dubious behaviour. However if your opponents are going to do it, you may need to follow suit.
How?
Specifically.
Provide examples.
Taking ballots en masse from people doing who knows what, before it gets to the polling area. Who knows what’s happened to them? I don’t. Certainly can’t point to one individual, but the possibility for abuse is rife, it would be virtually undetectable and has probably happened.
So you don’t have any specifics or examples, just a vague notion that something could happen.
Got it.
How?
Specifically.
Provide examples.
I refer you to my previous post
I’m sure Republican efforts to harvest ballots will make it clear about all the ways it can be done illegally and abusively.
I’m not sure if it’s bad, but what if it was bad? Have you even considered that?
So, again, you don’t have an answer. You stated that your initial thoughts are with the republicans. I can only assume that means your main reasons are because it’s the opposite of what the left wants and/or because the younger generations are less likely to vote in person, therefor making it easier for republicans to win.
That’s their reasoning behind it. Remember, even when the republicans tried to find voter fraud, they mostly found that the only people cheating was them.
But on the other hand, it could be good.
From my half-awake Wall Of Words at the beginning of the thread:
And this is what leads to the majority (although not all) of the voter fraud coming from Republicans.
From this article
Clearly, the balance of evidence shows that the overwhelming majority of voter fraud cases was found to involve Trump supporters.
Republicans believe their own propaganda that it is trivially easy to commit voter fraud and if the Democrats did it they need to as well, or they try to “test the system” in the hope of proving that its broken. Of course it is neither the case the voter fraud is easy or that it is rampant among Democrats so they end up getting caught. Of course this wasn’t helped by Trump actually encouraging his supporters to vote twice.
Now that the 2,000 mules movie has come out I expect that some deluded Republicans will try to replicate it with the justification that, “They do it so we should to”. When they get caught I hope the courts make an example of them.
There’s two kinds of ballot harvesting:
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People who helpfully collect ballots and drop all of those they collect in the drop box.
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People who collect ballots and do something nefarious with them. Perhaps they modify some of the ballots to change who the votes were for or even just not dropping off the ballots of people who they think are not of their party.
Number 1 is probably what most ballot harvesters do and is not a problem. Although in some states, this activity has been made illegal (see below). Number 2 is illegal everywhere and does sometimes happen. Notably in NC-09 in 2016 and 2018:
Laws about ballot harvesting:
Oh, and just a note for @colinfred, the above post by @dtilque is what we’re talking about- yes, it was an illegal use of harvesting for “nefarious” purposes, yes it was CAUGHT, yes it was corrected, and YES it was Republicans doing it.
So, this is the sort of thing @Joey_P is asking about when they ask:
Or in the words of my 5th grade math teacher: Show your work.
I’m not comfortable with the idea that “We don’t need to fix Vulnerability XYZ until or unless it manifests as a real problem.” That’s Boeing management or NASA O-ring logic.
Sure, real-life instances of people harvesting ballots and then tampering with them are rare. But it’s still a gaping hole in security.